Unless your horses are being used for agriculture, and your new building isn’t being built in your garden, then it will almost certainly require planning permission. Each individual planning department has it’s own criteria regarding equestrian developments and the sort of thing they would find acceptable and unacceptable. It’s always a good idea to give them a ring and have a friendly chat with them about your particular proposal.

Even though you will be erecting a building, an application for stables or an American Barn will generally be classified as an application for change of use, rather than an application for a new building and most planning departments will charge around £335 as an application fee, although this can vary from place to place.

Depending upon the number of stables you require permission for, an application package will normally require scale drawings of the site in question – including any significant changes in level, scale drawings of the stables themselves, a location plan of the area in question and in most cases some written supporting information regarding the detail of the application and it’s effect on the surroundings.

If you are considering making a planning application, then you should allow between 2 and 4 weeks to get the application prepared and around 8 weeks or so, for the planning process itself.

If you are thinking of building your stables in your garden, then you maybe able to avoid a planning application and build your stables under something called ‘permitted development rights’. Generally speaking, if your house has got permitted development rights, then you should be able to build your stables as long as you leave more than 50% of your garden as garden, they can’t be built in front of a wall that forms the principal elevation of the original house, they shouldn’t have a ridge more than 2.5 metres high (in many cases this can be increased to 4m high) and the eaves can’t be any higher than 2.5m high. As ever, we’d recommend a discussion with your local planning department about this as well, but very often as long as you work within the restrictions above, then planning permission won’t be required.

If you are considering a mobile field shelter, then in most cases planning approval is not needed. As we’ve already mentioned above, it’s always a good idea to give your local planning authority a call for their advice, but quite often, as long as your mobile building isn’t connected to water, electricity or the drains then planning permission won’t be required.

Whilst we are happy to give you advice on various things, we are not planning experts and we’d always recommend that you speak to your local planning department or an equestrian planning consultant or equestrian architect about any potential planning issues.